A general view of the White House in Washington. (Reuters/Yuri Gripas) / Reuters

The White House once again suffered an embarrassing security breach over the weekend when a 4-year-old toddler squeezed through the bars of the fence along the building’s north lawn and ended up on presidential property.

Secret Service agents
raced out the White House door on Sunday afternoon with guns
drawn after they received reports of yet another security
breach.

The incident momentarily sidelined an event at 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue, but authorities soon realized that the mystery intruder
wasn’t intent on doing any damage.

“Update on brief security scramble at the White House prior
to departure: It was just a child,” the Weekly Standard reported Sunday per a pool
report sent from the scene.

According to the Washington Post, the toddler had climbed
under a temporary bike rack near the gate of the north lawn and
got onto White House property.

“The child was fine and was safely reunited with
parents," Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary told the
White House pool reporter afterward.

This weekend’s incident marked the second time in eight months
that a child was able to compromise security near the executive
mansion. Last August, the White House was briefly locked down
when a toddler squeezed through the north gate fence, sending
Secret Service agents scrambling across the lawn.

“We were going to wait until he learned to talk to question
him, but in lieu of that he got a timeout and was sent on [his]
way with his parents,” a spokesperson for the agency
explained at the time.

Of course, those events are hardly the only ones to occur in
recent months leaving egg on the face of the Secret Service.
After a number of headline-making security lapses, a spokesperson
for the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC said
that a Secret Service agent was arrested on charges of attempted
burglary and destruction of property only two days before the
toddler’s north lawn adventure. Meanwhile, other recent
incidents, including a March 4 event in which two Secret Service
agents drove through the scene of an active crime scene, remain
under investigation.